Page 85 of A Ruse of Shadows

“He was disposable, like everyone else.”

“Such as Mrs. Kirby, the counterfeit Mrs. Claiborne?”

Bancroft raised a brow. “So you found her out? Well, women are especially disposable.”

Lord Ingram forced his breaths to remain even. He had never met Mimi Duffin or Constantina Greville, theotherwoman killed so that there would be a corpse that could pass for his then wife, but their fate would always haunt him.

“I feel bad for her,” said Holmes quietly. “I feel worse for Mr. Underwood, since there were indications that he died trying to warn me.”

“The wages of disloyalty. I would have suffered him to live after we caught him, but he tried to escape. And those mercenaries guarding him had no understanding of subtlety.”

“Would you really have suffered him to live—or did you merely not want to deal with his corpse for a while? After all, in this weather, a body would not keep very well, and one thrown away willy-nilly would quickly end up in police custody. You knew that I would not have neglected to check new unclaimed bodies that came in.”

Bancroft sniffed but made no reply.

“Did it displease you when I stumbled upon his body?”

“Sometimes the meddlesome are unaccountably lucky. His body would have been in that coal cellar mere hours before being removed. But you had to happen upon it.”

She shook her head slowly. “You invited me to ask questions, my lord, but now that I ask questions, you don’t seem too pleased.”

Lord Ingram almost chortled aloud. Bancroft invited questions because he wished to gloat, but the questions Holmes asked were hardly conducive to that.

“In that case, I might as well eat a sandwich. Are you sure you still don’t want any?” She sat down on a large round stone and held out the basket toward Bancroft.

“I am sure,” he said frostily.

“And you, my lord Ingram, anything for you?”

Lord Ingram’s stomach was wound tight. Still, he walked toward her. “What do you have?”

“Cheese sandwiches and butter-and-jam sandwiches.”

“I’ll take a cheese sandwich.”

She gave him a paper package. He opened the package and sniffed the salty sharpness of cheddar. It was nice, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her in the moonlight, sandwich in hand, as if they were a pair of children who had run away from home—but not too far—for a nighttime adventure.

She didn’t eat her sandwich but only drank from her canteen. “Mrs. Watson? Lawson?”

They declined. Lawson remained by the side of the carriage; Mrs. Watson stood close to him.

Bancroft resumed his ambling. At one point he ventured a few steps into the ruins and set a hand on a still-standing arch. He even hummed for a while. As time passed, however, he fell silent.

“Are you still early for your rendezvous?” Holmes asked, after another quarter hour.

The night had become cool, the spill of moonlight on blades of grass white as frost.

Bancroft did not answer.

“Or is the party you are meeting running late?” Holmes continued, perfectly—or perhaps deliberately—oblivious to the irritation Bancroft radiated.

“Things don’t always run according to schedule.”

“Wemanaged despite the very short notice, Mrs. Watson, Lord Ingram, Lawson, and I,” said Holmes. “Those tardy folks, were they the ones originally entrusted with your escape from Ravensmere?”

Bancroft sounded as if he spoke through clenched teeth. “They have, by and large, already fulfilled their end of the bargain.”

“Only to abandon you in the middle of nowhere?”